Hugo

Evasion. Answer the question: what schools of economics embrace this theory and who are their major proponents? Clearly at least some of them are implausible since they are not borne out by empirical evidence. A scientific theory can be borne out in the laboratory but be inapplicable in the real world. Evasion again. So where are your examples? This was the original question. Anyway, if you want figures: Net profit for Ferrari/Maserati in 2003: 2 million euros. This converts to $2.6m US. (Source: Detroit News Auto Insider.) Net profit for Ford in 2004: $3.47bn (Source: Hoovers, Detroit News Auto Insider). This is 133,461% of Ferrari profits. They had a very bad year in 2003, but still made 19,038% of Ferrari profits. That rate-of-return is the primary measure of wealth, and also/therefore that niche marketing offers at least equal and usually greater opportunity for wealth than mass marketing. Done. I still don't see it. Please provide a quote or link. Taking a leaf from Eureka's book, eh? Real-world evidence is very necessary to support your point. Otherwise you have nothing. That was not evidence, that was irrelevance. As I already said: Then what company has a markup of 900%? If you can't find one, then we are dealing with a pure fiction, and if that is the case, you could quite easily 'prove' your point by assuming Brand X makes a one thousand billion quadrillion gazillion percent markup. I do mean the former. And if von Mises point is meaningless (by which I assume you mean obvious), why do so very many people - the majority of them, including most currently-writing economists - miss it completely? I don't disagree with those principles. The problem is that you have oversimplified greatly, and there are quite a few more crucial points in the process that we disagree on. Note, for example, that in point #1 you use the word "offered". This is incorrect. You should have used the word "expected". It seems trivial, but look hard and you will see that it makes a huge difference. Oh, you've studied economics? Where? When? But you make gross assumptions about both the prospect and the time of return. You treat all investment as being equivalent to a savings account or mutual fund, but venture capital investment is a very different beast. Always comes down to this, doesn't it? To summarise: You have a theory that works purely on paper with very carefully constructed fictitious scenarios, with outrageous assumptions and premises. All real-world data disproves it. You claim that there is real-world data that proves it, but won't provide it. You claim it is widely accepted fact, and yet cannot tell me of one single source (apart from you) who believes it. I doubt anybody other than me would even be bothered with your babbling, quite honestly.

Which schools of economics embrace this theory? What are their names and who are their chief proponents? Numbers cannot. Number games can. What we have been doing is constructing artificial scenarios in which our theorems are proven true. However, the real world does not support your hypothesis. Add 'game theory' to the list of things you need to research. Yes I did. I compared Ford to Ferrari, Wal-Mart to Tiffanys. You offered no rebuttal to that. You have not provided any real-world examples to demonstrate that which you claim is a universal truth. Where? Provide a quote, because I don't see your answer anywhere. Lie. Oh, it's a lie? Again, quote where you have cited real-world evidence that proves your claim. That, for example, the markup on a Rolex watch is 900%. The only people who'd ever see profits even approaching that might be Mafia loan sharks and Colombian drug lords, but then again, probably not. They're businessmen too and they know such a policy isn't a good idea. So you think it is impossible to make a rate of return in the thousands of percentiles and yet make a net profit of pennies? OK, clearly I need to demonstrate! I make a product for $0.0001. I make 10 of them and sell them for $0.01 each. My rate of return per unit has been 9,900%. My net profit has been 9.9 cents. Stupendous rate of return. Infinitesimal net profit. Understand? Why? Because you say so? Are you a world-renowned economist? Have you won a Nobel Prize? Is there anyone who is or was a world-renowned economist who agrees with you? You've demonstrated that economics wasn't something you'd ever studied. Once again, you are reduced to flailing around trying to redefine basic terms in some bizarre way to avoid looking like a fool. It doesn't work. No, that's you. I know that rate of return and net profit are entirely separate as I have demonstrated several times. You, on the other hand, insist that profit only be measured in rate of return, and that net profit is irrelevant, and all the worlds economists and accountants are wrong when they disagree with you. You still have absolutely no proof for anything you've claimed, do you?

You see, here's the problem. Your theory only works on paper, and there are no real-world examples of what you are claiming is a common fact. A theory that is not borne out empirically is wrong, and this is what your theory is: wrong. You have still yet to show me a real-world example of what you are talking about. Your number games may make sense if we allow their dubious assumptions, but the fact that they are divorced from reality means that they must be missing something so vital as to make them completely false. The noteworthy thing about number games is that I can prove my point with them as easily as you, but the real-world evidence overwhelmingly backs up the Misesian assertion. I asked you to look at real-world evidence in my last post and the fact that you studiously ignored my request speaks volumes, as well as your decision to ignore the uncomfortable fact that the markup on a Rolex watch is not 900%. Your number games rest on highly spurious assumptions and you are continually unable to provide real-world data. This is irrelevant. It is perfectly possible for a company to be making rates of return in the thousands of percentiles and still make a net profit of less than a dollar. These data you have provided do not disprove that possibility. Until you provide a list of the companies that generate the largest net profits (i.e. that create the most wealth) that corresponds almost exactly with this list, nothing is proven. Your other option is to prove that rate of return is synonymous with wealth. Until $90 is greater than $1000 this cannot be. Otherwise, pennies are worth more than thousand-dollar bills as long as the rate of return on the pennies is higher! That is indeed the question! Von Mises point was that more wealth is created through selling to the masses. You are trying to pretend that he said that the most profit-per-unit is derived from selling to the masses, which, as I keep saying, is not the same thing at all. You think that a complete lack of evidence combined with an actual disdain for fact and a self-confessed penchant for flights of fancy and wild speculation is "adequate"? Yes. I also know the difference between net profit and rate of return. Again, I also know that a theory that is borne out in the real world is a fact, and one that is not, is a fiction.

Yawn. More Marxist dogma, why is this tired nonsense still being peddled? Capitalism creates an "elite" of consumers, since they are the ones who decide what they will buy, and capitalists have to pander to their whims or watch their sales dwindle. Since we are all consumers, capitalism makes everyone a member of the "ruling class." Since the advent of capitalism real wages increased faster than they ever had before and faster than they have after socialistic regulations were introduced. The tendency under capitalism is for prices to decrease and real wages to increase over time. Capitalism is liberty and democracy is incompatible with liberty. Democracy rests upon the assumption that a person, or many people, have the right to pick a person who can dictate to other people how they may live their lives. You refute this point yourself. If citizens are pitched against each other, how could capitalism create "powerful multi-national corporations"? Corporations are often given free reign by the state, which grants them legal personhood, limited liability, and monopoly powers. Blame the enabler. This is backwards. The amount of federal laws in the USA that govern corporate regulation are comparable to the length of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The DoJ went after Bill Gates. Government regulation destroyed Bethlehem Steel. John Connally, the most corporate-backed Presidential candidate in history, got only one delegate from all the primaries. No single corporation employs more people than the Department of Defense, or the combined numbers of the Depts. of Health, Human Services and Welfare. In 1980, Congress confiscated $100bn from oil companies. It goes on. Very few corporations have more employees than a large university. The fact is that the largest employer, most powerful and richest entity is the state, not corporations. Moreover, the state has the power and the 'right' to use violence and coercion should it wish to, which no corporation has. This does not explain why wages kept on rising since the advent of capitalism. It displays a fundamental ignorance of wage theory. Employers pay a wage that will attract them the workers that they want. Many companies offer raises for tenure and performance, which isn't mandated by any government regulation. This assumes that the work done by managers, investors and inventors is worthless. It derives from a labour-centric theory of value, which nobody (not even socialists) have held in the last hundred years. Production is made possible by three factors: labour, ideas and capital. Workers provide the labour, inventors provide the ideas, and investors provide the capital. Besides, we are all investors now. If you have a savings account or an insurance policy, welcome to the ranks of the capitalists. Many things prevent social equality, like genetics. Some people are born smart and others, stupid. Furthermore, capitalistic production of food has made access to food universal. The only countries that still have famines are socialist ones. Capitalistic production of cars and televisions has made them pretty much universal as well. So it would have gone with education, if the state had not abducted that service for itself, causing a decline in quality and increase in price that is particular to state-run enterprise but wholly absent in the free market. So don't vote for them. But I would say that this is a problem with a system that gives any person arbitrary, coercive power over another. Capitalism is not such a system, all transactions are voluntary.

Not to mention the fact that an American might buy more than one flag, at $10, whereas he's unlikely to buy more than one Rolex. I think you're also vastly overinflating the return on a Rolex. Very few luxury goods have a 900% markup. If they did, an investor would certainly have to be an idiot to invest in the company without first insisting on price reform since a small price cut would certainly increase total profits. It's very unrealistic of you to assume that a precision-made timepiece made with a great deal of precious metal by skilled craftsmen can be produced for $1000, and I'm not particularly interested in an argument that rests on such fallacies. Perhaps you could be bothered to research actual costs and profits of various industries. This, of course, will prove von Mises right, since it is an empirical fact that the Fords and Wal-Marts of the world are richer and make more profit than the Ferraris and Tiffanys. Anyway, I have noticed that you have entirely given up arguing the original point and are now just quibbling about von Mises. Why? Is the original point - that Scandinavian countries have "the best standard of living in the world" - indefensible? If there have been "many" then it should not be too much trouble for you to provide one. What, unrestrained capitalism? I couldn't agree more. Which, as if by coincidence, has disappeared in our culture since roughly the introduction of the welfare state. I think it's more a question of expediency than of cultural values. You mean, now that Hong Kong has introduced state pensions, state pensions become necessary? This sounds about right. All the state does is perpetuate itself and expand its own power.

No. What I will say is that larger enterprises offer better return on investment beyond a certain point. Because a niche market is necessarily very limited, beyond a given level greater investment will not generate any returns. Therefore, with larger investments, larger enterprises offer greater return on the investment. So if you only have $10, better to invest in your product and sell it for $90. But if you have $1000, better to invest in mine, since the same $1000 invested in your niche enterprise will still probably only generate a revenue of $90 or not much more. For further illustration, just because you build one hundred thousand Ferraris doesn't mean you can sell them. On the other hand, if you invest that money in building one hundred thousand Fords, you'll probably sell them all. Hence, the rate of return on Fords is a lot greater. Von Mises has simply said that a capitalist can become a lot wealthier if he pursues a mass market than if he settles on supplying a niche. This might seem an obvious point, but very many people don't get it. You see, the point refutes a widely held belief: that capitalists are evil, greedy, and fleecing the consumer. Evil and greedy they may be (although such terms are subjective), but the consumer is dictating to them, and not vice versa. If a capitalist doesn't heed the wishes of the masses, he'll fail in selling to them and won't get rich (or as rich). You have not been specific about how you measure "quality of life". Indeed, if we take Swedish opinions on the pace of life and compare them to American ones, we find that Swedes believe their quality of life is lower. You have said that the Swedes have more social programmes, but in my estimation the end goal of such social programmes is to combat poverty (since stabilizing the labour market etc. is just a means to getting more people employed, which is a means to more money, which is a means to ending poverty). If the Swedes have sacrificed their incomes and consumer goods for less poverty, then we should expect that the USA has much greater poverty than Sweden, but this is not the case, as the US Census data I have already cited shows. Indeed, we often find that "poor" Americans are better off materially than the average Swede. My point is that neither a state pension scheme nor state healthcare is evidently necessary for longevity. Hong Kong and Singapore prove that. Whatever causes their longevity, it isn't a state pension scheme (which Hong Kong lacks) or state healthcare (which Singapore lacks). Eureka's talk of genetic factors is just about unproveable, since ethnic groups tend to also have material differences which affect longevity. For instance, in the USA, Asians are the richest ethnic group, and blacks the poorest, with whites in between. If we found that Asians lived longest, and blacks died soonest, this wouldn't prove anything about the genetic causes.

Only if you're writing fiction. We aren't. We are discussing the world as it is, not as you think it ought to be or as you imagine it. Perhaps the superior life expectancy in Hong Kong is due to magic somehow? The wizard Merlin has appeared and cast spells of longevity over the people? I don't think so. Get with the programme. No, it requires some evidence. You are making claims that the longevity of Hong Kongers is due to genetic factors or some other unspecified factor (maybe one you imagined). If this is the case, it shouldn't be too hard for you to find a study showing that Asians, or Chinese, or Cantonese people naturally live longer due to genetic factors. I was shown to be wrong? Where? I've reviewed the thread and saw no such thing. Perhaps you'll quote or link. But I doubt it, because according to you, imagining that I was shown to be wrong is just as good as it actually happening. So what you mean is, "I wish you had been wrong." Who is the one with the blinkered worldview, exactly? I see you refusing to accept or even read empirical evidence in favour of your self-confessed imaginative, speculative conclusions. You have blinders on, and the sad thing is that you put them there. All those willing to discuss the real world are welcome to debate this with me. However, Eureka, if you want to discuss your fantasy worlds I suggest you set up your own forum. I won't join it, because I stopped believing in magic, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and so on a long, long time ago.

What you are forgetting is that the ceiling for returns from a niche market is much lower than for a mass market. Niche markets might offer a better return, but the limit of return is quickly reached. Mass markets offer less return per unit, but they scale far higher. It's one of them. But wealth is not measured in rate of return, and wealth was what von Mises was discussing. Where did you refute my evidence? I don't see any dispute that Americans have more consumer goods and higher incomes or that Hong Kongers and Singaporeans live as long or longer than Scandinavians! And this is my evidence thus far. By the measure of both parity-adjusted income and the material standard of living. You seem to have forgotten more than I. Link 1 Link 2 Solving the problem of extremely slow economic growth has become a major priority for the Swedish government.

For the second time now, back it up. Prove it. You do understand the need to prove statements in debate, don't you? So they set a goal, reached it, and then gave up trying to get anything better? Nonsense. That runs contrary to everything about human nature. For instance, Swedish economic growth has been slow since 1950 and very slow since 1970. This isn't up for debate, it is a fact. Check OECD, check the CIA Factbook. Now, I might ask you to prove your assertions. However, I know this is a waste of time, since you consider imagination and speculation superior to research and facts. You've cited evidence? I must have missed that. Where was it again?

You're trying to confuse the issue. You say that investment is driven by the return, and then try to sneak in the qualifier of return-per-unit, which isn't the same thing at all. In any case, investing is driven by the return on investment, and not on the profit per unit of the enterprise that is invested in. No. I get $1000 in my pocket, after costs. You only get $80. Last time I checked, 1000>80. No. Net turnover, net revenue and net profit are the key financial indicators of a company. When considering investment, cash reserves and market share are also considered crucial. Profit-per-unit takes a backseat to all of these. Dell profit-per-unit is a lot slimmer than Alienware, but nobody denies that Dell generates greater net profit. We've been discussing my evidence for 5 pages. Americans are richer and have a lot more consumer goods and creature comforts. Hong-Kongers don't (didn't) have state pensions and live longer anyway. Singaporeans don't have any state healthcare and live just as long. It's also a fact that the Scandinavian countries are rapidly running out of money, with stagnating economies, and stagnation in the pace of their achievements. Swedish and Danish economic growth is nonexistent, and their life expectancy increases have failed to keep pace with less socialist nations.

The point is that Castro, who portrays himself as a hero for the working man, is nothing more than a thief and a thug. Comparisons to George W. or QEII are irrelevant. We could compare them all to Hitler or Stalin and they'd all come out (relatively) smelling of roses, but what use is that? I don't believe in excusing criminals just because they aren't alone in the world.

The point is that bigger enterprises make more profit. You dispute this with talk of return per unit, but if that's true, then you go ahead and make something for $10 and sell it for $90, and I'll make a hundred and sell them for $20. According to you, you'll be richer, even though you end up with $80 in your pocket and I laugh all the way to the bank with $1000. They are. You're just trying to quibble by claiming that "profit" should not be measured in net for the business but only per unit sold. Well, I could say the same for your arguments. There's more to consider. For instance, between 1970 and 2003, American life expectancy increased by 7.4 years, whereas Denmark in the same period only saw an increase of little more than half of that, and Sweden only improved by 6. The Hong Kong example proves that public pensions are not necessary for longevity. The Singapore and USA examples prove that socialised medicine is not necessary for health. Bearing in mind that public institutions of this kind have an alarming, indeed universal, tendency for waste, corruption, inefficiency, stagnation etc., and seeing that these institutions are apparently unnecessary, would it not be better to pursue other options for health and longevity besides state-provided ones? Furthermore, the fact that the Scandinavian nations can be beaten in pretty much all metrics for standard of living, and not only that but beaten by more capitalistic countries, puts paid to Blackdog's original assertion that the Scandinavians have built themselves the best standard of living in the world. It simply isn't true.

Forbes Right after Queen Elizabeth II. Excerpt: Viva la revolucion.

Yeah, yeah, but do you have any evidence? I see. So basically, I should forget about trying to accurately answer the question and spend my time imagining and speculating about it. Is that what you've been doing? I edited that out because I realised that it didn't take into account government subsidy. Sweden has no official data on poverty levels, so it's hard to be certain anyway. Check out the Austrian take on it. Exactly. No, the way it is practiced in Canada it is, as you point out, neither insurance nor wealth redistribution. It's more like another tax since the money gets siphoned off into other government programmes. If it were an insurance scheme, each individual account would be paid into and then drawn out of in the event of need. If it were a wealth redistribution scheme, all collected money would be distributed to the unemployed. But neither of these things happen. Just to clarify, I'm speaking of UI as it is practiced, not as it should be. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with savings for dire need - but I don't see why the government needs to monopolise the whole programme. It is certainly evidence that social welfare is not necessary for longevity, though. And based upon the Hong Kong example, it certainly is not outrageous to suggest that Sweden does not need public medicine for its longevity. In another example, Singapore has an entirely private healthcare system and the same life expectancy as Sweden. If we isolate Stockholm (thus making it a purely urban populace, like Hong Kong), the life expectancy is for females is 81 and males, 75. In Hong Kong, 84.3 years for females and 78.6 years for males. This virtually eliminates the questions of proximity and concentration, since urban centers make facilities pretty much universally accessible. He means the total return, and no, he isn't wrong. Big business takes home more cash than niche enterprises. That is a fact you haven't disputed. Margin per unit, which you are discussing, is a different concept. They are written in two different places in company record books. When you are talking about overall profit (as Mises was), margin is irrelevant. Net profit is what's being measured.

Both, and it's the same source: the US Census Bureau. They consume the same amount of staples, but 100% more protein. You suspect. Well, when you have some evidence, I'll consider it. Based on what evidence? Based on what evidence? We're not talking about population density here, we're talking about living space per individual. If 2000 people live in high-rise apartments with 1000 ft2 of living space each, that's dense population. If those same people live in detached houses with 500 ft2 of living space, that's less population density. Besides, the "denser occupancies" were a bane of the Industrial Revolution, leading to disease, overcrowding, and so forth. Now they're a good thing suddenly? Where is the evidence that the US healthcare system is failing Americans more than the Swedish system is failing Swedes, please? Wrong. There are no savings accounts for pensioners. Taxpayers pay in and pensioners draw out on the same money. As TWS says: If it were a savings system, how could there be a surplus? There's no such thing as "surplus savings". However, there can be a surplus if you're redistributing wealth and you find that more people paid in than withdrew! Based on what evidence? Based on what evidence? Based on what evidence? I don't think many people work for spiritual satisfaction. Sweden has 287 doctors per 100,000 people. The USA has 279. Hong Kong has 160. I don't think it's access to medical care facilities. This scheme dates back to the New Deal, and even then that story didn't wash. FDR's government didn't try to achieve the benefits you list with UI alone, instead they embarked on massive public spending and job creation programmes. UI was primarily a compassionate scheme to try and abrogate poverty. Look nothing! I specifically said "all else being equal, a product that has a potential market of 100 will almost certainly make less profit... than one that has a potential market of 1,000,000." What you did was make an example where all else was decidedly unequal, in fact, your "cost to market" shows a staggering disparity of almost 10,000,000%! Run the equation again and this time, make "all else equal" as I originally said: Company A # units = 100 Product A cost to market: $100/unit Market Price = $1,000/unit Revenue: $100,000 Profit: $90,000 Company B # units = 1,000,000 Product B cost to market: $ 100/unit Market price = $ 1,000/unit Revenue= $1,000,000,000 Profit = $900,000,000 Your theorem, besides, is not borne out in practice. Mass-market car manufacturers are doing far better than niche luxury manufacturers, like Ford vs. Rolls-Royce. No, wait: Rolls-Royce autos is out of business. Compare any high-end computer manufacturer (Cray, Sun, SGI) to Dell. If what you say is true, provide a few real-world examples of niche market companies who are doing better than their mass-market counterparts. Besides, this whole comparison is ridiculous. You are claiming that the wealth of a company is not measured in overall profits but in profit per unit, which is patently absurd. To investors, profit per unit takes a backseat to overall profit. If what you said was true, companies wouldn't bother trying to expand!

As far as I'm concerned we are still discussing Scandinavia compared to "anywhere". Therefore, any other country is a fair comparison to any Scandinavian country. Otherwise the original point wouldn't be true. The point I'm making with Hong Kong is that it can't be the case that Sweden's socialist measures alone have given her better life expectancy, because Hong Kong has even less socialist measures than the USA and yet has a higher life expectancy than either. Even if Swedish socialism has been partly responsible for the increase, it can't be a major part because the near-total absence of such measures in Hong Kong didn't stop them exceeding Swedish life expectancy by a greater margin than the Swedes exceed Americans by. And what is that? Agreed. Unfortunately, the whole "pension" scheme in Canada and the USA (which we can henceforth refer to as "aged wealth redistribution" or something similar, if you prefer) hinges on this Big Lie. Hence George W.'s plan to partially privatize the scheme, which might work if "pensions" were like savings as politicians claim, but definitely won't work in the real world because that isn't how "pensions" in the USA work at all. But that's another story. Sorry. You said "It's macro benefit is stability, efficiency and flexibility in the labor market." In that vein, I would think that the Japanese scheme of job retention and retraining would work better than the scheme to let people lose their jobs and then redistribute wealth from the currently-employed to them. Salaries aren't an incentive because they aren't what people want. What people want is to satisfy material want-needs. Salaries get material goods and jobs get salaries. The point of work is not work, it's not even a salary, the point of work is the satisfaction of material want-needs. This is the point of work and salaries, and wealth redistribution: to satisfy material want-needs. They all have the same goal. But Mises' point is that, all else being equal, a product that has a potential market of 100 will almost certainly make less profit (and a lesser return on investment too) than one that has a potential market of 1,000,000. Think of it this way, too: with mass marketing, initial one-time costs like R&D are spread out more. Thus the profits are higher per unit as well as in net. I think the difficulty is that we are comparing different products with different capital requirements and different costs. If you levelled those factors, then selling en masse would bring greater returns both in total and as compared to initial investment. Economies of scale and all that.

The original point was: Therefore, I think a comparison of Hong Kong to Sweden is just as useful as a comparison of the USA to Sweden, and you had no problem with the latter. The OECD finds that Swedish goods cost, on average, 105% of American prices. Bearing in mind that the cost of goods is roughly in parity (or slightly in favour of the Americans) I think that income is quite a good measure of prosperity. I agree that it wouldn't be if prices were wildly different, but that isn't the case here. Furthermore, the PPP data compiled by the HUI does take into account the differences in prices and cost of living, and their report is even more damning of the notion of superior Swedish prosperity. I have no data to hand on adult food consumption or fruit consumption in America according to income strata. Do you have some to provide? Hah. Tell that to George W. Bush and Paul Martin. They insist on calling their redistributive schemes "pensions". By your standard, Hong Kong (without a state pension plan) has a true pension, since people there do actually invest and save for their own retirement, rather than paying for the retirement of others in the expectation of having others pay for theirs. Well, if not "poverty" then certainly the goal is to avoid material hardship. If regulating the labor market was the concern, then a scheme to pay companies to keep employees in jobs or retrain them such as is practiced in Japan would be better. That is what salaries are for, primarily to avoid poverty, secondarily to try and become wealthy. The overwhelming majority of people don't work because they love it, they work because they want material wealth and comforts. No, "wealth" is an absolute, measured in material assets. Rate of return is a different concept, hence it has a different name.

Life expectancy in Hong Kong is 81.5 years. That's higher than both the USA and Sweden by no small margin. Hong Kong, however, up until very recently had very little in social safety nets. There was no state pension scheme, for instance. It would make the USA look like a cradle-to-grave nanny state. Based upon what? Where is your data? "The poor" in the USA is defined by the US Census Bureau as households whose income falls below a certain level. For instance, in 2002, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $18,556; a family of three was deemed poor if annual income was below $14,702. -- US Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2002 Well, actually pensions are a wealth redistribution scheme. You support pensioners now. When you are a pensioner, your grandchildren and their peers will support you. But regardless, the goal of all these social programmes is, I'm sure you will agree, the abrogation of poverty. We don't provide unemployment insurance because we like to give people money, we provide it because not having a job tends to lead to poverty. I'm not inclined to hear your anecdotal evidence. The fact is that you could visit virtually any country in the world and get a very distorted picture of how they live. There are slums and there are mansions in every nation. It depends upon where you spend your time. No, I don't think so. When you speak of how wealthy somebody is, you tend to speak of their net assets, not how disproportionate their returns were. Andy Bechtolsheim invested $200,000 in Google in 1998, now, that same stake is worth $300m. That's a huge return on investment, but I don't think anyone would consider him wealthier than William Clay Ford.

I don't see how this data can even be compared with the HUI study. They aren't measuring the same things.

Oh, I'm sure they get something for their tax dollars. My point is that Americans seem to get a lot of the same benefits but have more left over, too. Well, American life expectancy is about 2 years less than the Swedish, so obviously their nutrition and healthcare aren't all that different. A 2 year difference isn't much. In a 78-year lifespan it's about 2.5%. Swedes also say that their pace of life is more stressful and commit suicide more than Americans as well, which doesn't say anything good about these Swedish values. As to welfare, pensions and all that, again, there doesn't seem to be a problem with American poverty. As I remarked in another thread, 94% of "poor" Americans aren't overcrowded, 75% of "poor" households have a car, most have more living space than the average Parisian or Londoner, 97% have a colour TV, and the average poor American child will grow up to be an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the average American soldier in WWII. So I don't see that America is woefully behind Sweden in all these social aspects. If they are even slightly behind I would say that that is more than offset by their far greater disposable incomes, wealth and consumer goods. I think, putting those two together, the conclusion is that Americans are better off. The point of social programmes like unemployment insurance, pensions, welfare and so on is the abrogation of poverty caused by low income or no income. To see how successful these measures are in a society, we should look not at how many of these measures they are or how extensive they are, but what poverty is like. I certainly don't think that the USA has any problems with poverty that are not at least equally shared by Sweden. Yes, it is a different contention. That's the author's fault. I think he probably knows it, but made an error of over-generalisation. However, I know from having read Mises' Human Action that he never says that you can't make money from a niche market or from selling to the rich. Quite the opposite. He just says that it's a lot more likely to become rich through selling to the masses, which is true, I'm sure you'll agree. Well, that's not really the same question. I don't think it is up for debate, though, that as a rule large mass-marketing enterprises make a lot more money than niche industries.

That's not entirely true. It's not that their costs for consumer goods are fixed (for example), they just don't have as many of them. And whatever Americans pay for healthcare that Swedes don't, it evidently isn't enough to stop them buying a lot more computers, microwaves and tumbledryers than the Swedes do. I think the consumer goods spending is quite a good indicator of the wealth and standard of living of a society. People will spend on consumer goods after they have taken care of the essentials (unless they're idiots, but idiots tend not to have much money to begin with. Unless it's Paris Hilton). Swedes may have their essentials taken care of by the government a lot more than Americans, however, after those essentials are paid for, they evidently have a lot less left over than Americans do. If you actually read von Mises, you'll know this is not the case. Austrian-school economists know that you can make money selling to a niche market. However, they also know that you can make an awful lot more selling to the masses. Ford makes far more profit than Ferrari. Wal-Mart makes far more pofit than Tiffany. In this case, the author has indeed committed a hasty generalization. However, he is mistaken by attributing this generalization to Mises and Rothbard - the fallacy is entirely his own. If you like. I expect you have a competing study to bring forward.

This is. Methodology: IMF data, official US and Swedish government data on incomes and GDP, private consumption and retail spending per capita since 1980. They used fixed prices and purchasing power parity to compare across currencies, and compared median incomes.

Why is that? Here. The author cites a Reuters report on the Institute whose original report is, presumably, in Swedish. That's ridiculous. $400 can buy you a pretty nice television. But I can beat that, though. In Denmark, you pay 205% tax on a car.

Pardon me, but that's controversial at best. The Swedish Institute of Trade found that, from 1980 to 1999, the average Swedish household was considerably poorer than the average black American household (and blacks are the poorest group in America). They also found that in 1999, the median Swedish income was $26,800, compared to $39,400 for U.S. households, and this trend was reflected all the way back to the earliest data they looked at (1980). In the 1990s, 70% of Swedish households owned a washing machine, compared to 92% of Americans. 31% owned a dishwasher, to 53% of Americans. 37% ownership of microwaves to 86%, 18% ownership of tumbledryers to 82%, 48% of VCRs to 83%, 29% of computers to 40%. The Swedish suicide rate is 14.7 per 100,000, compared to 11.8 in the USA. Pace of Life is measured at 7 in Sweden and 16 in the USA (with 1 being fastest). Sweden boasts 2.6 R&D scientists and engineers per 1000 workers, compared to 7.6 in the USA. 13.8% of Swedish workers are employed in high-tech industry, compared to 21% of American workers. Per-capita financial wealth is $9,258 in Sweden, $64,402 in the USA. American women earn 13% more now than they did in 1980. Swedish women have gained nothing. (From a study by Cox & Alm). I wouldn't say, from this data, that Swedish quality of life is higher than anywhere. In fact, most Western countries can beat it, including the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, etc. We already thrashed out a fairly long thread on the subject here.

Look at these two statements: 1) People have a right to healthcare. 2) White people have a right to healthcare. Is there no difference between them? I think you might say that technically, there isn't, but there's an implied statement in the second (i.e. non-whites have no right to healthcare) which, if the author took the time to specify "white people", was almost certainly intentional. The difference with those would be that parents pay for them up-front, whereas compulsory pre-secondary education is publicly funded. So one can assume that you don't include pre-school and piano lessons because they don't fall into public education, unlike pre-secondary and the post-secondary education you refer to. Anyway, what's your answer to the question? Why should emigrants only need to pay for post-secondary education, when they received pre-secondary education as well?